How to Spice It Up
by Cageyspice
Summary: Food, chemistry...life. Isn't it all about how well two things go together? Even unexpected combinations? Life sure can change on a dime, but we try to get by. Sometimes serendipity even smiles on us. My entry for the Sookieverse Weekly One-Shot Challenge for Week 8 of 2012 "Life Can Change on a Dime."


**A/N: Thank you to my great friend/beta/critique partner Northman Maille for the idea that sparked this oneshot, for her skills, and for…for just **_**everything**_**. XO **

**Thanks to the Sookieverse for posting weekly challenges to keep us writing!**

**These characters belong to the talented Charlaine Harris.**

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Sookie's chin nudged against my chest. The angle of her delicate neck reminded me of a sunflower; her face, gleaming and flushed, her lips red and full, tilted towards my inquisitive gaze. Apparently, I had my answer.

"Mmm," she moaned. "More, Eric. That was…incredible."

I cupped my hands around her face and kissed her bee-stung lips, inhaling as I did. If I had a soul it would have sighed.

I turned back to the kitchen counter and shook generous drops of Tabasco sauce on another oyster, held it to her lips and enjoyed the way her eyes fluttered closed in anticipation as I gently tipped the salty spicy liquor into her mouth.

"Holy Mary mother of God that is good," she exclaimed.

"How can you be from Louisiana and not have had oysters and Tabasco before?"

"They just weren't part of Gran's repertoire, and you can't buy them in Bon Temps," she said. "Besides, whenever I've seen them in a restaurant they just look so…so..."

I quirked an eyebrow at her. Squeamish was not a side of Sookie I had ever encountered. She did date vampires.

"Gross," she finished with a definitive nod.

"And now?" I asked.

"Hurry up and shuck me another one."

I pinned her with an overtly lascivious stare. "Later I hope you'll be asking me to do something that rhymes with that."

She punched me in the arm and some of the oyster liquor spilled onto the counter.

"Oh hell, that's one of the best parts," she complained.

"I knew I'd make you a lover of the sea. You would have made a fine Viking wife."

"I already am," she said. "In _the only way that matters to you_." She rolled her eyes.

"Sookie," I began in a quiet voice. "I think we need to talk about this again."

"No," she said emphatically as if making a decision. "I'm just going to enjoy this moment."

"This moment?" _I_ felt the moment had turned sour and was not one for savoring.

"Yeah. This moment. This _who-the-hell-knew-oysters-were-so-amazing_ moment."

"Ahh." I nodded, relieved we were not going to have yet another evening of disagreement.

"Well finally I get why people are so fanatical about oysters. And I get why the addition of hot sauce takes it all to another level. But why did _you_ want me to experience this?"

I eased my height down into one of her small kitchen chairs and opened my mouth to speak.

"Don't sit. Keep shucking!"

"As you wish my little sea monster." She fit a lot of what Southerners liked to call _sass_ into her 5'6'' frame. I would call it something else. I couldn't help but feel the corners of my mouth twitch upwards.

I grasped another rough-shelled oyster in my hand and worked a knife into the apex where I could gently torque the top shell off. These same motions had been made many times by my human hands, except, rather than white and unmarked, they would be raw and red from the cold and the saltwater in the inevitable cuts and scratches.

"We often went hungry when I was human. When the land did not provide and the animals died or were all eaten, only the sea provided. If it weren't for the sea, I would not be here. The sea was our livelihood and our safety net. It is as much a part of me as the sun is a part of you."

Sookie stood motionless beside the counter, her oyster momentarily forgotten.

"It is true that I came to Louisiana in the 70s for the first time, but it was actually the 1870s. I suspected Ocella wanted me back with him, and I needed to be inconveniently far away. In the aftermath of war, vampires can feed unnoticed for a long while. For years many people are transient, either homeless or seeking a better situation. The days after the Civil War were no different."

"You were here after the Civil War?" she said. "You could have met Bill. Or Lorena"—she screwed up her face—"or—"

"No," I interrupted. "I did not. Nor did I want to. I was not interested in keeping the company of feuding new world vampires. The politics have always been tiresome to me."

Sookie motioned over to one of the kitchen chairs and we both moved to the table to sit down. The shucked oysters sat untouched on the counter.

"I found myself for a time on Avery Island. There were few inhabitants left there and after a week my throat was burning with hunger. I came to a farmhouse in the night. A candle in the kitchen had been snuffed out, but no human lay inside for his rest. I keened my ears and heard talking out in the field behind the home." I looked down at the table and felt a smile pull at my face.

"Ew, Eric! Are you smiling about a memory of someone you drank? That could as well have been my Great Grandpa Stackhouse."

"No," I said, still amazed she chose to be with me. "I heard only one voice but I approached cautiously. It was a lone farmer. He was lamenting the fate of his crops. The weather was hot and his pepper crop needed to be harvested but the local farmhands had mysteriously died."

Sookie crossed her arms and tilted her head at me like I was a naughty child.

"I know, Sookie. Now be patient and listen to the rest of my tale."

She settled herself to listen.

"I couldn't help but listen to the man. Everything had gone wrong for him. He fought in the war and had returned to a salt mine no longer operating, and a farm that had been destroyed. Through a miracle his peppers had continued to grow and through hard work he had made his hot pepper sauce a _hot_ commodity—"

Sookie interrupted me with a groan.

"But now he couldn't bring the crop in to capitalize on that. He was on the brink of ruin once again," I said.

"Life sure can change on a dime," said Sookie, a clear note of insincerity in her voice. "Especially when there are vampires involved. Eric Northman, this is not helping your cause."

I held up my hands in supplication. "Wait. Allow me to regain your good opinion."

"Well, I don't know about that," she said.

"Trust me."

She narrowed her eyes and I continued. "He carried on for some time, angry at the world for one thing going wrong after another. I knew that feeling. My family, my village had suffered the same. Many times. I suppose you could say I felt a kinship.

"I watched him shuffle a defeated path back to his farmhouse, complaining about going to bed every night for the next year with a belly full of oysters or whatever catfish he could get out of the _crick._"

Sookie smiled knowingly at me. I knew she would like this story. "A belly full of oysters to keep him alive," she said with a significant pause. "What happened next?"

"I brought his crop in during the night and went to ground nearby. The next night he paced the fields, calling out 'I would like to meet the man who has saved my livelihood. Show yourself friend.'

"And so, I did. He was alarmed by my paleness. He knew enough to be alarmed that I brought in the crop all by myself. But yet, he trusted me and took me into his home. He offered me some of the hot pepper sauce that was his product. He called it Tabasco. He shook it on an oyster for me, but I could only smell it. He didn't press me. He seemed to know that I was something other.

"I could feel him watching me as I savored the smell with my eyes closed. The salt of the sea and the heat—I told him it smelled of the sea, of my home, and of the sun that is irresistible but would burn my skin."

Sookie crossed the short distance to my chair and I scooped her into my lap.

"Edmund told me he had made his Tabasco to taste like the heat of the sun during a Louisiana summer. McIlhenny Company has been operating ever since."

Sookie hopped off of my lap to retrieve the oysters and bring them to the table. She traced the name on the Tabasco sauce with one small finger. "Eric Northman, just when I think I know you."

"It would take more than one lifetime to know me, lover."

"Nuh uh, buster," she said, wagging her finger at me. "We're not having _that_ conversation tonight either. For now, I think sunshine and the sea go together just fine."

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A/N: **McIlhenny Company has been making Tabasco since 1868. It was invented by Edmund McIlhenny on Avery Island, Louisiana. No copyright infringement intended.**


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